Genetic diversity of Ethiopian sorghum reveals signatures of climatic adaptation.

Menamo T, Kassahun B, Borrell AK, Jordan DR, Tao Y, Hunt C, Mace E

Published: 21 December 2020 in TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik
Keywords: No keywords in Pubmed
Pubmed ID: 33341904
DOI: 10.1007/s00122-020-03727-5

A large collection of Ethiopian sorghum landraces, characterized by agro-ecology and racial-group, was found to contain high levels of diversity and admixture, with significant SNP associations identified for environmental adaptation. Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor L. (Moench)] is a major staple food crop in Ethiopia, exhibiting extensive genetic diversity with adaptations to diverse agroecologies. The environmental and climatic drivers, as well as the genomic basis of adaptation, are poorly understood in Ethiopian sorghum and are critical elements for the development of climate-resilient crops. Exploration of the genome-environment association (GEA) is important for identifying adaptive loci and predicting phenotypic variation. The current study aimed to better understand the GEA of a large collection of Ethiopian sorghum landraces (nā€‰=ā€‰940), characterized with genome-wide SNP markers, to investigate key traits related to adaptation to temperature, precipitation and altitude. The Ethiopian sorghum landrace collection was found to consist of 12 subpopulations with high levels of admixture (47%), representing all the major racial groups of cultivated sorghum with the exception of kafir. Redundancy analysis indicated that agroecology explained up to 10% of the total SNP variation, and geographical location up to 6%. GEA identified 18 significant SNP markers for environmental variables. These SNPs were found to be significantly enriched (Pā€‰